Addition of Air Con to my Off Grid Home !

[nigel]

Yesterday I had a LG DC Inverter style 2600 w cooling capacity Split Aircon fitted to my off grid home. We are fortunate to have a sunny climate and 3.4 kw of solar at our disposal. By 1 o,clock most days my Classic and FM80 are in float, and thats including doing  a couple of clothes washes as well. So I basically see all my power going down the drain. from dinner time  onwards. Not any more I turned the inverter air con on around one ish  with full power using about 900 watts, then CC both throttled up to meet the load and keep my batteries at float .

The room was very cool in around a hour so much so that the wife went and sat out on the sun terrace, she likes the warmth. its been a long time coming but I get to use some of my wasted energy and stay cool this summer at last !

I got enough sun yesterday to match the Air Con in eco mode 200 watts till about 8 pm. Never had air con in my house before but
when I lived in UK didnt need it. Staying kool off grid !

[phonetic]

Im thinking to get a 2.4kW cooling inverter aircon..have a COP 3 so will comsume 800 watts peak from inverter..with a well insulated house will only need to run few hours on a very hot sunny day in summer heat wave (get temps of 40'c)
Im going to upgrade my system to 4.56kW PV array..might as well use the excess summer output to drive a aircon..the flip side is winter time I dont need to run the Genset.

[offgridQLD]

It really dose go hand in hand.

The days when you would need AC cooling are the days when its hot and sunny you have plenty of extra pv output. Most homes stay cool in the morning and dont start getting uncomfortable on a hot day until 11am or so and stay that way until around 5pm

So like you say if you can get your pack on float by midday its perfect.

kurt